


all this and heaven too

by ravenreyamidala



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:08:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6078762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreyamidala/pseuds/ravenreyamidala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We know what happened to Carmilla, but will we ever know how she felt? This is a character study of our favorite broody gay vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all this and heaven too

Alys the Young was married at thirteen and gave birth to Natalia the Cold.  
  
Natalia was raised with ambitions of rising higher than the the class she was born into. She was a maid for the Countess, befriending the young heir as a child, carefully taught by her mother how best to ensnare him and thus marry several rungs above her. The Count fooled himself in love with the slip of a girl, and one night, under the light of the full moon, a child was conceived in secret.  
  
They were married quickly, with the promise of a son on the way, Natalia convincing them with coy smile that she knew the child quickening in her womb to be a son. And when Mircalla exited in 1680 with her fair skin and dark hair and lips rose red, her mother deliberately cursed her never to know true requited love until man stepped on the moon. Yet Mircalla did not know of this, nor would she ever, the curse hanging over her, dictating her future.  
  
She was a sweet child, really, if a bit too inclined to clambering for stories about blood and war and philosophy from her father at bedtime for either of her parents to be completely comfortable with, but still normal enough for the casual passerby to pause for a second to take in her simple beauty, then continue afterwards without a second thought about her. She was not a son, however, and so her life was far from blessed, especially with the appearance of a second child, a girl named Theresea. With this new burden, her parents’ rage grew more potent and so Mircalla learned at an early age how to protect other people.  
  
Then Leopold the miracle was born, the perfect son who could do no wrong, even when he broke Theresea’s leg, even when he lit the kitten on fire, even when Mircalla knew the devil had taken residence in his tiny body. But the good Count and Countess would hear nothing against their answer to their once endless prayer.  
  
So she kept her secrets deep in her heart, one of which that longed to burst out when she watched the other young ladies at the ball dance gracefully around, their elaborate hairstyles bouncing slightly as if any moment that mass of hair would fall apart and tumble down, their ankles against all reason peeking out from underneath ridiculous layers of skirts and petticoats. At one such ball, fearing the reveal of her secret if she did not leave, she left the Baron von Vordenberg at the mercy of his numerous admirers and retired to the balcony.  
  
A beast then approached her, in the guise of a human woman, and while Mircalla's weak, defenseless back was turned, it attacked. Thus ends the story of Mircalla Karnstein the human and from her coffin rose the vampiress Carmilla Karnstein, irrevocably changed for the rest of her unnatural life.  
  
In the days between the ball and the end of her transformation, Carmilla's previous avatar had been declared dead. When she went home to greet her sister, Theresea denounced her as a demoness and threw holy water on her, causing burns that took weeks to heal. The Count unwittingly gave her permission to enter the house, however, so one night she stood over Leopold’s tiny bed and watched the rise and fall of his chest and listened to his soft breath and thought of the light in her mother’s eyes when Leopold did something trivial, his baby laughter years ago, the way he had felt soft and fragile and hers to protect when newly born. Then she remembered the bruises on Theresea’s arms, the broken leg that had kept her sister from the ball, the kitten that had done nothing.  
  
When she left, she left before the sun would rise, after Leopold’s chest had risen for the last time. And her mother cursed her once more to never know peace until her brother rose from the dead.  
  
This pleased the beast, for she had wanted Carmilla isolated from any support so as to better manipulate the fledgling vampire, and so she swooped in with clothes and reading lessons and all possible temptations for making Carmilla agree to be the perfect tool for the monster's goals. She gave Carmilla a new older sister and a younger brother and tugged on all of their strings to make them so as she pleased. Matska and William were proper obedient children and so was Carmilla, initially. Carmilla was happy to seduce young virgins and led them to the Mother who had given her so much. At first Carmilla didn't ask questions, but the precious darling was too curious about the world to refrain from questions for long, and so one day she asked. And Mother grew so angry that Carmilla didn't ask for many more years and the next time she asked was because she was scared for the latest victim, a girl with angelic blonde hair and pure blue eyes that Carmilla had foolishly fallen in love with. Love had made Carmilla stupid, however, and her questioning of Mother made the hungry beast suspicious, and so Mother planned. When Carmilla showed up to run away with beloved Ell, Ell said she couldn't come into the house. When Carmilla was unable to cross the threshold, the betrayal apparent Ell's eyes lit a low, simmering anger deep in Carmilla's soul.  
  
Ell closed the door on Carmilla and from behind the door, Carmilla could hear the laugh of her beast Mother. Thus ends the story of Ell the human, and the person Carmilla had been, optimistically full of hope though now she knew she was doomed to a life of loneliness.  
  
Her Mother, whom Carmilla still loved despite the betrayal, locked Carmilla in a coffin of blood for plotting against her, and Carmilla rested for decades before fate freed her with a fortuitous bomb. She wandered the earth, not wanting to return to her Mother, but Mother found her anyway and coerced and coaxed Carmilla back into doing the beast's most "noble" work. She watched the moon landing with Matska, now Mattie, and scandalized William by adopting trousers and immodest shirts as her only clothing when fashion and society finally permitted it.  
  
There came a day when Mother asked her to trick yet another young pure girl, and Carmilla did so, obediently, quiescent, the very picture of an obedient child, and of course Mother had no reason to suspect such a wonderful child who had obviously see the error of her ways. Yet somehow this girl— Elizabeth— was called home at a pivotal moment, and so escaped the Mother’s nefarious plans. Mother suspected Carmilla, but the next victim was delivered neatly into the waiting beast’s hands, so she eased off slightly. And the Mother saw that Carmilla had been good, but that she should be given a break before the honeytrap rebel again, so the beast sent Carmilla off to France.  
  
There was a painter there, who painted the most dazzling sunrises, sights she could no longer see for fear of blinding. His hands were strong, fingers callused from the grip of a paintbrush, and his voice was warm like a proper brother’s protective embrace. He told her stories of beauty and glory and the serenity of the world, ones that sent embers sparking in a soul she had thought gone with her metamorphoses.  
  
But try as she might, Carmilla didn’t love him the way she wanted to, but only as a friend, a brother. And when he asked for more, she came nearly to tears and left France to go back the Mother, leaving nothing of herself behind.  
For the following decades, Carmilla kept the memories of those painted sunrises for when her eyes closed and that gave her strength enough to remember her still clinging humanity and subtly work to sabotage her Mother’s methodical machinations. Yet sometimes when she closed her eyes, those flecks of beautifully rendered pigment could not shield her from the memory of her Mother’s high cruel laugh and Ell’s simple short rejection.  
  
And so she raged on, light never dying nor being passed on.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually a school assignment, believe it or not.


End file.
